


Equilibrium

by alexanderlightweight



Series: Roswell New Mexico Week 2019 [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 07:27:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanderlightweight/pseuds/alexanderlightweight
Summary: (Part of the Roswell New Mexico Week 2019)Prompt: FamilyHow do you stop running when it’s the only way you know how to live?





	Equilibrium

Alex knows the definition of family. It’s been immortalized with scars on his skin and engraved into his heart with the knife of disappointed vitriol.

Family is pain and violence. It’s disappointment and a rejection so sharp that it stabs at you until you break and all you’re left with is abandonment. 

Family is crying until you’re shivering with dehydration, eyes crusted shut, mouth dry as wind-whisked sand and your entire body heavy and numb.

And yet… family is hope.

Alex has spent his entire life trying to survive the only definition of family he knows that when he finally understands it can mean something else, that family and home can be someone else. He might be too late.

He’s lived years trying to escape his so called family. The people who use the claim of shared blood to tie him to them; his father and brothers and his mother long, long gone and yet here he is. Faced with the reality that he spent so long running from them, that he’s also been running and ruining his chances with the only real family he’s had. The only person who ever truly and unconditionally cared for him. 

It’s painful. To look at the past and realize that he was so desperate to escape, to be different from his family, so caught up in running that he turned a blind eye to his own mistakes.

How do you stop running when it’s the only way you know how to live?

Survival is ingrained in his soul. It’s the aching of his muscles after a lifetime of dodging blows. It’s the bend of his back from the weight of words and deeds. The quivering of his shoulders as he tries to hold his world up and take one step at a time. 

After losing  _ -leaving _ \- Michael, after going to war and after the loss of his leg, there were days he just wanted to lay down in a grave of his own making and stay there. It was spite that kept him going. Not hope, he didn’t think he had anything to hope for or look forward too. It was the fact that he wasn’t going to let his father win that gave him strength. 

He’d had moments of weakness, of self-doubt and a crippling disappointment in himself that struck every time he started to feel like he was finally regaining balance. Each and every time he thought he could finally create his own path in life he stumbled and found that like always, there was no one to catch him, there never had been. 

He’d had hope -not from returning to Roswell but when he’d seen Michael again- and then he’d slipped. Fallen back into old patterns, flight or fight warring and his adrenaline surging and he’d fled instead of fighting. 

He was finally feeling steady now. For the first time in his life he had his own place, a piece of safety untainted by his father’s control and set apart from most of the pain of his life. A place where he could possibly begin to regain his equilibrium and maybe someday, he’d have a real family. It wasn’t home yet, the only home he’d ever known was Michael, but it was a start.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as [alexanderlightweight](https://alexanderlightweight.tumblr.com)


End file.
